Texture of the skin

Painting the skin is an advanced value related study. Carnation, the colour of the skin is one of the most complicated challenges in watercolour. The examples I have dealt with will offer the fundamental techniques to solve one of the most common problems related to figure and portrait of the skin and its texture.

The chromatic composition of the skin is obtained with different colours, tones and reflections. While the skin is young, it reflects the light uniformly and with precise highlights. In contrast when the skin becomes older, its texture no longer reflects light uniformly but does so intensifying the texture and the shadows cast by the wrinkles over the feature of the face.

Besides representing the texture of the young skin as shown on figure 1 it is important to master this exercise by practising in many times.

In the figure 1 illustration, the shadow is only a small tonal difference with respect to the light areas. The clear tones can be painted by dragging the colours on the dry background cutting out the highlight in some areas, a blue layer can be painted to suggest a finer and more transparent skin or the highlights absorbed with a clean brush. If the paint is dry repeatedly passing the brush will enable whites or clear spaces to be opened up, perfectly outlined.

You will observe here that the texture of the skin has been done by blending two tones of different colours. The shadow is painted by blending the tones in the areas where it touches the tone below. The blending must be minimal and controlled. In the illustration that I have done on figure 2 the texture of the skin is begun by painting the carnation but reserving the most luminous area. The tone applied to reserve the brightest areas of the figure is a transparent yellow and mixed with a little ochre.

A lot of attention must always be paid in colouring the figure and you must always try to comprehend the internal structure of the figure and how the proportions of every part of the anatomy is clearly painted.a